Our New Delhi Bureau
Walking significantly lowers the risk of heart failure in older women, a new study shows.
The study of more than 137,000 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 is the largest and most comprehensive to date that has evaluated physical activity within the context of heart failure prevention.
In addition to reducing overall heart failure by 25 per cent, increased physical activity benefits two heart failure subtypes defined by cardiac function: reduced ejection fraction, which typically has a worse prognosis, and preserved ejection fraction, which is more common in older adults, especially women and racial-ethnic minorities.
“This is the first study to report physical activity levels are related to a lower risk of developing heart failure with reduced ejection fraction in older adults, particularly in women,” says Michael LaMonte, a research associate professor of epidemiology in the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions.
“This is pretty important from a public health standpoint, given the poor prognosis this type of heart failure has once it’s present,” adds LaMonte, lead author of the paper, which appears in Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure. Heart failure disproportionately affects older adults, with about 80% of cases occurring in people 65 and older, an age group for whom heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalisation.
Reduced ejection fraction heart failure typically occurs in individuals who’ve had a heart attack. The heart becomes a poorer pump, which leads to related complications, including the failure of other organs and, in a worst-case scenario, the need for a heart transplant or even sudden cardiac death, LaMonte says. Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction tends to occur in people who haven’t had a heart attack but do have high blood pressure or diabetes.
Researchers examined self-reported physical activity information from 137,303 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), a long-term prospective study that has yielded important findings on death and disease risk in postmenopausal women.
They then looked at a subset of 35,272 women who had either reduced ejection fraction or preserved ejection fraction heart failure. Over an average 14-year follow-up, there were 2,523 cases of heart failure, including 451 with reduced ejection fraction and 734 with preserved ejection fraction.
The cumulative incidence of overall heart failure was lower with increasing physical activity, compared to women who reported no physical activity at baseline
